AS Abigail Bullock prepares to celebrate her 13th birthday on Saturday it is hard to believe that 10 years ago she was fighting for her life.

Back then tiny Abigail clung to life by a thread, kept alive on a machine while she waited for an urgent heart transplant.

Mum Wendy and dad Kevin knew the chances of a heart becoming available were not good and that Abigail would die if a donor wasn’t found quickly.

But now when they watch her dancing, running and cheering on the Boro they feel like the luckiest people in the world.

Wendy admits there was a time when they did not think Abigail would see four never mind 13. Abigail’s GP picked up a heart murmur when she was just six weeks old. A scan revealed a hole in her heart and wrongly positioned arteries.

At seven weeks old she had to have an operation to widen a main artery then at seven months she underwent another to remove the wall between the heart chambers to allow blood to mix more freely.

A month before Abigail was three, she returned to the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle for full corrective surgery.

But she took a bad turn after the operation - her heart stopped and the crash team raced in. Abigail was put on a machine to rest her heart but her parents knew that if a donor was not found their little girl had only days to live.

“They had to put me to the top of the list,” said Abigail, who still has to go to hospital for regular tests.

The transplant team brought a compatible heart back from Ireland via helicopter and Abigail was once again taken into surgery.

“Somewhere between being poorly and having the transplant she suffered a slight stroke but she recovered quite well from that,” said Wendy.

“She just went from strength to strength and got better. She could not walk or talk after the stroke but she just got better and now she never shuts up.”

Abigail of Berwick Hills, said she has to take anti-rejection drugs every morning when she gets up and every night but she does not let her past trauma stop her doing anything.

The Macmillan Academy pupil participates in dancing and drama classes after school, has a season ticket for the Riverside and recently ran the Sports Relief mile.

In the future Abigail said she would like to be a hairdresser or even a designer like her sister, Sam, 22.

But for now she is concentrating on her exams and looking forward to having lots of fun in her teenage years.